Sexuality: Porn: Clergy of Evangelical persuasion more prone to porn?

The Lawrence [Kansas] JournalWorld, July 21, 2005, carries a lengthy article by Dave Ranney, "Minister who was addicted to porn says case not rare."

When the Rev. Darrell Brazell, an evangelical minister, first heard that police had found thousands of pornographic images on former Christian-school leader Martin K. Miller’s home computer, he wasn’t surprised.

“They said they found something like 6,000 images,” Brazell said. “That sounds like a lot, but it’s not. You can download that much in a very short amount of time.”

Brazell knows. He admitted to being addicted to pornography for 15 years.

“I suspect if there was a forensic examination of all the personal computers in Lawrence, some similar-size collections would show up in some very shocking places,” said Brazell, pastor at New Hope Fellowship, 1449 Kasold Drive.

Brazell, who said he’s been “clean” for five years, counsels and coordinates faith-based support groups for men addicted to pornography.

Lawrence, Kansas, is especially interested in these facts because Rev. Brazell has been meeting with the accused murderer Marty Miller, who gave up porn apparently two months after his wife was dead.

His ever-escalating addiction, Miller said, caused him to participate in an online adult dating service, which led to his having an extramarital affair with a Eudora woman that included role-playing, bondage, spanking and explicit photographs.

Prosecutors argued that Miller, a carpenter, wanted his wife out of the way so he’d be free to pursue sexual relationships with other women and so he could collect more than $300,000 in life-insurance money.

Clearly, Brazell said, Miller’s addiction to pornography caused him to act irrationally.

Now, a chain argument is called an enthymeme. Ain't that some danged enthymeme of rationality the Rev. Brazell is handing out on behalf of the reformed crazy-from-porn Mr Miller? In the face of such an irrational argument for the plea of irrationality in a murder, I think I'd want to revert to the good ol'fashioned "The Devil made me do it." - Owlb